Comparison of Methods to Derive Forest Height from Polarimetric Sar Interferometry

Six forest tree height inversion methods of polarimetric SAR interferometry were validated using repeat pass E-SAR datasets and the corresponding ground measured forest stand height. We show that SINC, three stage full model and three stage SINC inversions have good performance, and the SINC inversion with the first optimum coherence (OPT1) produces the best result among the eleven coherence types validated. Taking SINC inversion as one example, two inversion correction methods were investigated, RMSE can be reduced below 4.0m after correction. The phase and coherence inversion method achieved the second lowest RMSE among the six inversion methods validated, but the estimated tree height of it has very low correlation with ground truth, and this drawback was found caused by the poor performance of RVoG phase inversion method involved.